


Remis

by Riathel



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Missing Scene, Needs More Therapy, Relationship Study, Spoilers for Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, The Doctor (Doctor Who) is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22178557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riathel/pseuds/Riathel
Summary: When he’s compressed to so many strands of data, the Master is a puzzle she can solve.The Doctor tries to find answers from what little the Master has left her. It's just another game. She's not sure if it's one she has the patience to play.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 27
Kudos: 125





	Remis

_ I'd tell you more... _

Every time she replays the recording, it isn't the slick hum of the hologram, or the ghostly blue light, or the breathy quavering that draws the Doctor’s attention.

_ But why would I make it easy for you?  _

It's the Master’s eyes the Doctor notices first. There’s a flatness to them. Something cut from a very different cloth than the Master’s usual array of moods.

_ It wasn't for me. _

The recording clicks off. She’s stopped waiting to feel the sense of loss she knows will grow and grow until she gives in; she clicks it back on again. Restart. Refresh.

When he’s compressed to so many strands of data, the Master is a puzzle she can solve. There are patterns here to unwind, clues that he must have left nested in the recording, buried deep, deeper than she’s been looking. Maybe deeper than she will ever be able to look.

_ If you’re seeing this,_ he says softly. _You've been to Gallifrey._ She wishes for half a moment the recording might change, that he might reveal his final plan. His grand strategy behind all of this, something that makes sense, something that isn’t just the cracked, bleeding edges of her worst friend and best enemy. She could reach in now to time’s flow and force this to change. Force him to change, to undo and redo it all, to say and unsay the things that they could never take back. She’s the only one who can, now. 

She won't. She can't.

His voice is gentle and his eyes glitter as he rips apart their universe.

_ When I said someone did that… obviously I meant... _

_“I_ did it,” she wants to howl. She says nothing. She clutches the holographic projector as though it’s his hand. Like it can stop the words from his unreal lips, spilled so gleefully and so freely.

_ I did it. _

The Doctor presses the disc against her lips. She can't remember how many times she’s replayed this. Too many. Not enough. Both are true; both burn the back of her throat with the hate and the rage and the grief she can't get rid of.

“Why?” she whispers. Her voice is too hoarse for anything else; she’s asked that too many times already.

_ I had to make them pay for what I discovered, _ he replies, suddenly entreating.

There are things she should say. Things a better her would say. Speeches, appeals, pleas. Things she  _ has _ said, she reflects bitterly, time and time again. Where has it gotten them? A pair of ill-matched renegades, crashing about the universe, creating carnage and chaos. If the Master’s hands are stained with blood, so are hers. Two children of Gallifrey, with no-one but each other for company. No-one but each other to blame.

_ They lied to us, _ he hisses.  _ The founding fathers of Gallifrey… everything we were told was a lie. _

His newest regeneration is beautiful, even while spiteful poison seethes from his old scars. The familiar indicias of paranoia stretch across this latest betrayal.

_ We are not who we think. _

No. They’re so much worse. They always have been.

The Doctor isn’t sure if this time she will be enough. She isn't sure if she has been enough any of the other times. If one better move or word might have saved him. If she has enough forgiveness to reset the board and do it all again.

She's been sitting here for hours, maybe days, replaying his hologram until she has enough strength to make a decision. The TARDIS can materialize into the Kasaavin’s realm; the Master’s TARDIS presses against her mind, cajoling, demanding, and begging by turns. Just like her Master, she doesn’t know when to quit. The coordinates are preprogrammed, courtesy of an overactive navigational drive.

_ You or I_, he whispers and freezes dead. 

The Doctor stares at his still form, suspended for that single moment in time. The disc is warm beneath her fingers; his TARDIS hums in her telepathic circuits. Both are paltry after-images of him. Gall burns in her throat, the acidic taste of a lifetime trying to keep pace with the Master in a game she’s tried so hard to blind herself to.

“You or I,” she repeats. Her smile stretches oddly across her face, painful. Awkward. “Isn’t this how you wanted it? How you’ve always wanted it?” There’s no reply. Funny how you start to expect that of holograms. “You know what,” she continues. “In everything you’ve planned, every scheme you’ve plotted out so meticulously, I’ve always,  _ always _ had the advantage. I know you. And I  _ know _ what you think I’ll choose.” Her hearts feel untethered, sliding around her chest.  _ You or I. _ When he's like this, vulnerable and open, he's almost real. Almost reachable.

The recording restarts, flickering back to his starting position, the hooded anger in his eyes, the wounded hurt. He’s always been a second out of time. This is all just another test, designed to push and pull and pry at her resolve, at what should be fundamental to her. What should be simple.

“And this time, you're wrong,” the Doctor says. It doesn’t ease the way her hearts constrict, the fury of his TARDIS pulsing through her mind, her ears ringing with the ghost of his screams.

_ If you're seeing this— _

“I choose me,” she whispers.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Remis_ meaning:
> 
> 1) an archaic, French chess term meaning a "draw".  
> 2) a legal term meaning to “give up or surrender”.  
> 3) a French fencing term, meaning “to make a renewed thrust on the same lunge after the first has missed”.
> 
> Chess, law, fencing: all very Doctor/Master vibes ;)
> 
> Feel free to follow me on tumblr at riathel.tumblr.com to hear me scream about the new season of Doctor Who erratically. Also join the Doctor/Master discord server, all welcome: https://discord.gg/7S5HuwU


End file.
